


my ugly mouth kept running

by theankletattoo



Category: One Direction (Band)
Genre: Alpha Harry, Alpha/Beta/Omega Dynamics, Bottom Louis, Ex Sex, Exes, Exes to Lovers, Getting Back Together, M/M, Masturbation, Omega Louis, Post-Break Up, Reconciliation, Top Harry, slight himbo harry
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-13
Updated: 2021-03-13
Packaged: 2021-03-17 10:14:35
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,005
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29964837
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/theankletattoo/pseuds/theankletattoo
Summary: Another seed, another try except they know what caused the first wilt. They will be careful, they will be kind and together they will nurture it to life.sometimes second chances are more important than the first.
Relationships: Harry Styles/Louis Tomlinson
Comments: 9
Kudos: 91





	my ugly mouth kept running

**Author's Note:**

  * For [kittenblou](https://archiveofourown.org/users/kittenblou/gifts).



> chelsea, the bond we share is very special and close to my heart, you're the sweetest and the kindest friend i could ever wish for. i love you - to moon and beyond.
> 
> gazillion thanks to [ris](https://archiveofourown.org/users/falsegoodnight/pseuds/falsegoodnight) for reading over and stopping me from spilling more secrets.
> 
> title from _boyish_ by japanese breakfast

The thought comes to him as he is on the brink of release.

Harry is thrusting into him quick and dirty, his mouth sucking lazy bruises on his shoulder, hands holding his wrists, skin on skin, pale light filtering through the peach curtains, noises aimlessly falling from their lips and soaking into each other, Louis’ heart gasping suddenly, a trickle of pain and a slew of thoughts.

His cockhead nudges the little bundle of nerves in his arse, Louis paints his belly a sticky white and thoughts a watery blue.

“You were so good for me, sweetheart,” Harry murmurs into his sweaty nape, bruising lips now gone tender, still rocking into him, the swell of a knot barely in, rim sore and red.

Louis whines in reply, muscles gone lax. Harry pushes deep and his knot locks them together, thick and hot seed filling up his hole.

“Baby, baby, baby,” he keeps saying, like an exiled apology, the endearment not so much as to say he is endearing as much as it is to say that he has overstepped, that Harry has taken something that is not his and he doesn’t understand the sudden wave of emotion that is crashing over them.

He is apologising for the animal that is keeping them trapped and the thought won’t leave him.

“What are we doing?” he asks, feeling Harry’s breath stutter, the sure fall and rise of his chest — his chest pressed to his sweat slicked back, _touching_ — turns unsure, a breath held in too long, stomach ballooning, a puff of air, bones pressing against flesh again.

“I don’t know.”

Louis wants to rid himself of their mixed scents, scrub at his skin until he erases Harry from his body, cover up the evidences of lo — lust.

It is nothing more than that, the fucking, the biting, the kissing, the touching; they are each other’s habits and they’re too weak to lose the habit.

If either of them — if Louis were stronger, if his omega wasn’t so attached — were more stubborn, it wouldn’t have come to _this._

Them laying in a bed that was once theirs and not just Louis’, desperate fingers and mouths tangling and crushing because there is an expiry on their time together, an allotted period where they allow themselves to pretend as though Harry didn’t stomp out of their flat and Louis didn’t pack his stuff up.

They turn a blind eye to the empty spaces and try to fill it with their scents, blind each other with pleasure to balance out the hollow pain.

Louis shifts, Harry’s cock jostles in him, they both hiss.

“You don’t know what we’re doing — H, we broke up for fuck’s sake and here you are with your knot in me!” he shrieks, voice hysteric, hands absently reaching back to touch his cheek.

Harry leans into his palm, the light stubble dusting his chin chafes the pink of his hand.

“And I have your slick on my thighs, baby,” he grunts, jaw working.

“You don’t get it, do you?” Louis spits out, bitter and a little sad.

Harry still looks disoriented from reality and it hurts.

Something akin to shame burns bright in the centre of him. It’s not shame, Louis left it in the doorway when he let Harry in. _Again,_ a treacherous whisper adds.

Poems used to reside in the centre of him and now it is replaced with shameful sin. The poetry, the sins, the red, the burning, they are all for Harry.

He doesn’t know how to deal with it.

Eventually his knot goes down and his cock softens. Louis hides a wince in his arm as come drips down his arse and on to the sheets. Their smell will linger even after he scrubs the sheets with his bare hands and wash thrice.

It took six cycles of the machine for their scent to be gone — it’s a silly thing, six times washed and whoosh, there goes Harry and the comfort of his smell. He could try hard enough and convince himself the detergent is wonky and that is why he cannot sleep well like he used to anymore. It’s not like he’s spent his years inhaling another scent to calm him down on the most anxious and stress filled days.

“Does it hurt?” Harry tentatively asks, pressing his palm down on his back, tone gruff and raspy, delicate in a way that is possible only post coitus. 

It feels odd to say that. If they weren’t broken up — they’re not broken just broken up, oh god — Harry wouldn’t ask, he would lay with him after cleaning him up but they are not together and the after care is on a level of emotional intimacy that neither of them are brave enough for.

_Where?_ _Everywhere you have touched hurts me._

“A little but ‘s all right,” he mumbles, pasting on a bland smile on his lips, putting a lid over his spilling thoughts.

The alpha gets the hint, he stops asking and starts dressing himself. He moves differently, his body trying to hide in itself, finding nooks and crannies to stay hidden, out of sight.

Louis pretends it is sweat in his eyes and not tears as he watches Harry erase traces of his presence.

His hoodie, his shirt, his trackies, his hair tie and himself — they are all gone from his bedroom like they were never there.

At times it is unclear what hurts more, keeping him around or pushing him out.

He goes to his too big, too empty fridge and grabs a tub of plain chocolate ice cream — mint reminds him of Harry and fuck, he is wallowing in self pity and the usual masochistic tendencies are yet to spring up on him — and watches shitty cable tv.

He watches the advertisements, the reruns, a random soap opera that plays. He watches everything but nothing registers because he is still watching Harry crouch by the bed and pull out his pink and brown socks with the striped lace around the band, the sad curve of his mouth — the mouth that had been on him, pouring light into his body, drinking yellow from him — the sadness that he carries around his shoulders like an armour.

_When did our love turn into a burden for you?_

They are pathetic, his wolf even more as it curls into a ball of misery and longing, howling weakly for the other wolf it had claimed as their mate.

And they are both equally to blame, Louis plants the seed, Harry waters it until it sprouts, then they cry over the wilt.

A repetitive cycle of violence.

Dawn turns to arrows, the light breaks them from inside, the darkness rips them on the outside and there they lay, bodies sticky and tacky with come and slick, twilight desperately trying to heal them, stitch them back together, close the open wounds, dusk curves a rib inwards.

A repetitive cycle of violence except they are the ones inflicting it upon their battered bodies. Twilight only lasts so long, their wounds far too deep for the light to reach and heal.

Louis tries to drown the sound of his heart shattering over and over again with bad telly.

It rings loud yet muted in his ears, just like the fading footsteps of his alpha’s.

////

Louis finds himself at Aris’ place, standing in the kitchen as she potters around, adding honey and lemon to his tea, hands kind and soft but not pitying.

“We broke up,” he numbly murmurs, wobbly lower lip pressed to the warm ceramic, willing the sharp pricking of his eyes to go away.

“Oh, love,” she coos, rubbing random shapes into his back.

“And I asked him to come fuck me because I missed him,” he chokes out, tears spilling into the tea, cheeks flushed red, steam curling upwards.

There should be a metaphor, they are in the kitchen and he is crying, crying in a place of creation and crying about a man he thought was a forever and he wants to stop searching for metaphors and words in people.

He wants the kitchens to stay as kitchens, his pain to be pain and not an ill constructed metaphor behind which there is no meaning. Words can mean so much and so little.

“It makes no sense,” he keeps crying into her shoulder, tea abandoned on the counter, inhaling the plain fragrance of her perfume.

Aris smells like spun sugar and not vanilla and tobacco. There is no underlying grey his nose has become so accustomed to. She’s sweet, sweet, and sweet.

“You will make it through, sweet boy,” she tenderly says, holding his body, patting his back and consoling him.

It makes him sob harder. Minds are ugly and they keep spewing out toxic bullshit like how he doesn’t deserve the tenderness being offered in Aris’ embrace or how his heartbreak was his own fault.

As he sinks to the floor, her body sliding down along with him, shame rears its disfigured, rotting head again, treating his heartbreak as something to be discarded overnight. Something that is insignificant to everyone and by default should turn insignificant to him.

“Did you miss him or did you miss his body?”

An acrid laugh burns Louis’ throat and the corners of his mouth. “I miss him as a whole, Aris. His body, his kisses, his touches, his voice, his scent. I miss waking up with him. I miss him like my own self.”

Her dark eyes narrow into slits, forehead creasing. The curve of her mouth is kind but her words don’t seem very kind to his pain sore ears. “Maybe that is the problem, Lou. You’ve built your entire world around _him,_ do you know yourself?”

“I don’t know,” he hollowly admits, voice rough and shot to hell, the sobs draining him of energy.

_Do you know yourself? Do you know yourself? Do you know yourself?_

The question haunts him like a lost spirit. It trails after him pitifully.

Louis catches his reflection and stares at the man in the mirror. Does he really know himself when everything related to Harry is thrown out?

Louis Tomlinson, omega, painter, and what else?

Bile churns in his stomach. The realisation leaves a bitter aftertaste, similar to skin of a citrus.

There is no answer he can get his hands on. They all keep floating away from him while he stays rooted to the ground with heavy feet.

He throws up and brushes his teeth after an hour. He spends a long minute watching the sick pallor of his skin, the darkness under his eyes, the haunted look reflected in the icy blue of his eyes.

Louis lies down in the middle of his bed and slips his hand under the band of his boxers, tugs at the trimmed patch of coarse hair, gently traces the veins lining his dick, tries to not imagine a specific alpha, lazily strokes himself.

There is a lot he needs to relearn about himself and pleasure is the first thing he’s set his mind to focus on.

In his memory there exists not one incident where an orgasm wasn’t coaxed by Harry and he intends to change that.

Pride bubbles in his throat as his cock fills out in his palm. He sometimes thinks of himself standing in front of the man he loves, his mouth begging for him, body begging for love. He grips his cock a little tighter.

Louis imagines the pink of the inside of a mouth, he imagines a warmth engulfing it.

The grey of his boxers darkens, slick rapidly soaking into the fabric, the tartness of his scent coming out, telling the world of his arousal.

Eyes fluttered shut, he reaches for a pillow to tuck under his hips. His nail snags on a loose thread, the sudden burst of pain sparks something in him.

Heat coils in his pelvis, in the sharp dips of his hipbones, his belly button and the crook of his elbow.

Once again, he is burning except it is pleasure.

Arching his back, he feverishly pulls his pants down, kicking off the cotton hastily. He rubs the rough pad of his finger around his hole, gathers the slick and brings it up to his mouth and sucks it clean.

Tangy sweetness spreads along his tongue, devoid of the taste of skin and salt — he’s tasted his salt and he doesn’t like it.

Something foreign rattles in him.

For a fleeting second Louis wishes the fingers were Harry’s — he almost convinces himself that they are not his but an alpha’s but they remain his.

His omega growls.

A finger breaches him, probing and prodding, touching and exploring, tight heat engulfing his digit, toes curling into the sheets with pleasure.

One turns to two turns to three, he rolls onto his side and lets the cool air caress his sweaty back and pumps them in and out, lets his lips part and eyes roll to the back of his skull.

The quivering of his thighs is familiar and alien in the same twitch.

The orgasm is _his_ as he comes.

Louis pretends like there wasn’t the taste of a name on his tongue as he climaxed and sits up, opening the second drawer for wipes.

As he rummages around for those, his gaze lands on a familiar frame, the paint chipped, metal a little rusty, the copper undertones clear.

Louis doesn’t need to look to know what it holds. He was the one to frame that picture of them.

It’s Harry and him after a picnic date, sky a million shades of purple, stars sprinkled throughout, their smiles brighter than the sun.

Despite the tiredness, he doesn’t sleep, the emptiness of the bed, the absence of another body glaringly obvious.

The longer he stays up, the worse he feels. Ever since he presented, there were lengthy talks about sex and love and babies and alphas and everything beyond and beneath.

For a while it repulsed Louis, all the things his body could do and bear, it made him sick to his stomach.

Growing into a new body, a body that he didn’t know could grow and stretch and accommodate him in ways he never imagined before, it was tough. Louis didn’t want to be tough anymore.

He lies in a soft puddle of longing and regret.

///

The alpha answers on the third ring. “Hello?”

“Harry,” he breathes, watching the ceiling, the glow in the dark stars they so carefully stuck.

Harry had put a sticker on his cheek and called him his star — his sun, the one lighting him up.

“Louis,” he shortly replies, moving around, ready to come over the minute he asks him to.

They are weak, tender stems, still growing, not deep or strong like roots yet.

“Come home to me,” he chokes out, watching the sky go from a soft blue to burnt orange, filled with flight, fight, fury and freedom.

“We broke up,” Harry reminds him, but he is moving, footsteps thunder down the rickety stairs, the sounds of people infiltrating the conversation.

“I know but we need to talk and I want to do it here,” he replies, watching the orange burn.

If it burns for a little longer maybe a star will drop and maybe it won’t shine under exhaust and grey from the fall but he knows it will retain its glow.

The ground won’t swallow the light.

Before he knows there is a knock on the door and a man in his house.

Harry kicks his shoes off and stands in the doorway, nose twitching and nostrils flaring, the tight coil of tension wound around his shoulders.

“Hi,” he rasps, blinking at him, voice devoid of the usual alpha timbre.

The ugly, dark part of his being revels in it, in the fact that he’s capable of reducing an alpha’s confidence. The other part of him aches for all that he is putting Harry through.

His omega whimpers watching the subdued set of his jaw.

It shouldn’t hurt to be reminded just how fragile they’ve become around each other. Or maybe it is their hands that have become reckless.

“Hi. The kettle’s still on,” Louis says, clearing his throat to get rid of the scratchiness.

There is sand in his mouth.

“Okay.” Harry gingerly moves to the living area and subtly eyes the mess of clothes pushed to the far corner of the sofa.

“It’s not a nest,” Louis immediately denies before he has the chance to wonder.

“You don’t have to explain yourself, Louis,” he bites back, gritting his teeth.

Anger licks the apples of his cheeks.

“It’s not — nevermind.”

Louis wills his wolf to calm down but it is a creature built on stubbornness.

“What did you want to talk about?” his tone is bland, smile empty, guard up, waiting.

There are thorns in his heart, poking and prodding at the thin membranes, not enough to break through it and stick out to pull them out, but enough to keep hurting with every beat of it.

Once upon a time he was fucking naïve and believed they would be perfect and the minute their so called perfection wobbled, he turned into a coward and gave up on them.

“I’m sorry for how we ended things,” he blurts out, refusing to look away, stare fixed on Harry.

“It was a long time coming,” Harry mumbles, shrugging and for one horrible moment Louis wants to give it up all over and forget about them.

“It wasn’t!” Louis is screaming in his head but his words are barely audible.

Harry slowly walks to him, their toes touch, Louis bites back a whimper. Long fingers curl around his shoulders, fingers pressing down.

It has to hurt before it heals and Louis isn’t sure how much more hurt he can bear in his body.

Familiar green eyes peer into his, it brings an onslaught of memories, of instances where they’ve been in the same position, _together_.

“Baby,” he whispers, swallowing harshly, Louis can imagine how the soft swell of his Adam’s apple feels against his mouth.

“I want to try again,” he breathes, pressing sore lips to his throat, trying to drink the light from his skin.

“Lou.”

“Can I try again?” he asks, eerily calm.

“Yes, yes, please —” Harry grunts, picking him up, large palms cupping the back of his thighs, metal meeting flesh, coral, opal, amethyst, a groan, shaky hands finding purchase on thick shoulders, Louis in the air for a suspended second, wings sprouting from between his scapulae, black as tar, spread out and wide.

The moment is trapped in orange liquid and blue light. Not dawn, not dusk, not twilight.

Harry stumbles and stubs his toes into corners and grips him tight enough to leave behind imprints of his fingers, little planets pressed into his body in the shape of fingers, portraying the roughness of his movements.

Louis’ missed them, missed the universe mapped out on his body after they make love.

The short distance from the hallway to his own bedroom is filled with a litany of curses and startled noises ripped out from their throats, bodies sliding against each other’s, hysterical laughter bubbling in the hinge of Louis’ jaw.

It feels right, the exiled apology, half written prayers, they complete themselves.

Louis feels exquisite, slowly being laid on the bed, his torso curving and twisting off to a side, face lolling to rest on his bicep — he can imagine, the soft curve of his waist, the roll of slight fat below his rib cage, the sharp edge of his jaw, the way his hair spreads out behind him in a cinnamon wave. 

A sight Harry’s seen far too many times but this is the first _he_ is seeing himself for all that Louis is.

“You’re so breathtaking, omega,” he murmurs, words spread across him like stardust, Harry’s mouth on his hip bones, his hands exploring his face, Louis’ hands picking out the sinewy muscles spanning across his shoulders and arms and the column of his throat.

Want swarms over his vision like a lace veil. He’s never been religious but when he’s being touched the way Harry touches him, he believes holy is what they are, worship is what they do.

Louis closes his eyes, Harry’s unkissed mouth wraps around his cock, something golden finds home on his lips.

It tastes like love.

///

Talking is not as easy as biting, kissing, touching, fucking, hurting and pleasuring.

The lover beside him is fast asleep, his body a sure thing, his arms wrapped around him — him and him and him, he tends to forget who is who and cries himself to sleep.

Louis is a coward and he takes twisted comfort in knowing that.

“We’re going to try and this time I will kiss you right,” Louis promises to the sleeping alpha, eyes no longer searching for places to hide himself in.

Harry’s chest rumbles as he tucks himself in, cold nose pressed to warm skin, cracked lips pressing broken kisses, trying to find the yellow and the gold and the blue to give back to the light.

They eat breakfast sitting beside each other.

“We should actually talk.”

Harry hums, turning to face him properly. “S’pose we should.”

“This is bordering on unhealthy,” he plainly states, hand waving in the space between them.

“We’re way too dependent, and have no clear idea of boundaries,” Harry counters, pointing at him with a carrot speared on his fork.

“Of individual boundaries,” Louis corrects, stealing a cherry tomato from his plate and chewing on it.

“Think that’s where we went wrong. We never gave each other _enough_ space and as time passed, personally, I felt suffocated by our relationship,” the alpha admits, a sad tilt to his head, mouth curved downwards.

Louis wants to reach out and touch, comfort the other man but he holds back. “I’m sorry.”

“I could’ve said this sooner but yeah. I’m glad we’re doing this now.”

Harry squeezes his elbow and his heart lodges itself in his throat. “We definitely need a break from each other and being in a relationship, so we can learn to love each other in a way that is kinder to both our beings, H.”

Louis stands up and takes their empty plates. He washes them and Harry dries them, silence not choking.

They gravitate towards the sofa and sit down at the corners, facing each other. Harry reaches for Louis’ ankle, simply holding him.

“Let’s go on a cheesy first date, kiss in the theatre and make out in the car. A fresh start,” Harry confidently says, stroking the jut of his ankle, the black inked triangle, the arch of his foot.

“Okay,” Louis easily agrees, tipping his body forward, body resisting the bend then giving way, resting his temple on his shoulder, breathing in synchrony.

“Anytime we’re overwhelmed by each other, we will sit down and talk,” he adds, a stern finger patting his cheek.

Harry complies, nose scrunched and lips quivering to hold in a grin. Louis presses his own shaky lips to Harry’s.

Another seed, another try except they know what caused the first wilt. They will be careful, they will be kind and together they will nurture it to life.

“We will,” Harry murmurs, lips still brushing each other’s.

 _I will love you again_ he thinks, watching the imperfections that make the alpha _him._

_This time I will love you without hurt._

Their wolves nudge against their rib cages and Louis takes it as an answer and a promise.

The hurt has drained to give way to healing, twilight isn’t the only time where they are willing to stitch up each other.

Light spills from their bodies and Louis thinks, he thinks his mouth is no longer ugly and desperate, running and running and running, begging for love, begging to be loved, begging.

He sniffs the ash, the grey, the flower and the white.

The man he is kissing is love.

**Author's Note:**

> [ tweet](https://twitter.com/theankletattoo/status/1370762655955226632?s=19) [ fic post](https://hadestyles.tumblr.com/post/645556307520372736/my-ugly-mouth-kept-running-by-theankletattoo)


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